There is apparently no end to how prison inmates can get creative when it comes to smuggling contraband items into their cells, specifically drugs; and in the case of the Cebu City Jail, they’ve hit a new low.
City Councilor Dave Tumulak confirmed what many have suspected for a time, and that is the exploitation of detained child and youth offenders by inmates to deliver these contraband items including drugs into their own cells.
As if these children weren’t exploited enough by these adults outside of jail when they were used to get money from alms given by sympathetic adults.
Or worse, when they are told to participate in sexual acts against their will and then sold like cattle to aging, sexual predators.
Apparently a 10- to 20-foot wall separating the Operation Second Chance Center where the kids are detained isn’t enough to prevent them from throwing said contraband to the waiting adult inmates on the other side.
It’s not just cigarettes but shabu which is inserted inside the cigarette packs for the inmates.
Given the pervasiveness with which this has occurred long before Cebu City Hall took over supervision of the city jail, it’s a given that the guards were in on the conspiracy with the inmates and the child offenders.
One wonders how the child offenders are paid for their efforts.
Surely they must receive something in return for risking the possibility of them being caught red-handed throwing contraband over the fence to the inmates on the opposite side of the wall.
At least now we know where the inmates get their drugs aside from the habal-habal drivers whose leaders have yet to publicly assure the city government and the public that they will crack down on their ranks in order to stop the flow of drugs inside the city jail.
The automatic response will be to enforce more stringent security measures like building a higher wall which would take sometime.
Barbed wire fences may delay the delivery of said items, but what’s to prevent jail personnel and workers at the OSCC from delivering said contraband discreetly to the intended “customers”?
Allowing the inmates to have their cigarettes is out of the question considering that it can be used to conveniently deliver shabu and other drugs into the cells.
In fact, anything can be used to deliver shabu to the inmates who have lost their freedom to do what they please the minute they committed crimes against their fellow Filipinos.
It’s up to City Hall to decide what other security measures they would impose on the inmates, including the proposal of a total ban on cell phones and drones inside the jail premises which has yet to secure approval from the council.
It’s time for the inmates to toe the line, and any privileges they may want from the city government, they would have to earn through trust.